Barrow Point language

Barrow Point
Region Queensland, Australia
Extinct by 2005[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 bpt
Glottolog barr1247[3]
AIATSIS[1] Y63.1

The Barrow Point language is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language. According to Wurm and Hattori (1981), there was one speaker left at the time.[4]

Classification

Ethnologue (2005) classifies Barrow Point together with Guugu Yimidhirr as a branch of Pama–Nyungan, but this may be a geographical grouping from Dixon.

Phonology

Unusually among Australian languages, Barrow Point has at least two fricative phonemes, /ð/ and /ɣ/. They usually developed from *t̪ and *k, respectively, when preceded by a stressed long vowel, which then shortened.

References

  1. 1 2 Barrow Point at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  2. Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
  3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Barrow Point". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  4. Barrow Point language at Ethnologue (15th ed., 2005)

See also John Haviland and Roger Hart's Old Man Fog and the Last Aborigines of Barrow Point, ISBN 1-56098-928-9, a novel about the efforts of Hart, a native of the Cape York peninsula, to record and preserve Barrow Point language and culture.


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